Former ACA Journalist Alleges Nine Knew About Ben McCormack

When police raided the A Current Affair offices at Channel 9 and arrested well known journalist Ben McCormack over explicit conversations about young children, Australia was shocked.

But according to a former ACA employee, the Nine Network was not in the same boat and it is alleged that they actually knew about McCormack's obsession and attraction to young boys before the story became public.

A former journalist for the news program, Caroline Marcus, claims that staff and management at Channel 9 were aware about McCormack's inappropriate behaviour because he was open about his attraction to young boys, but they failed to act.

These claims come after McCormack faced court last week and was given a $1000 three-year good behaviour bond for having sexually explicit conversations about children on secret chat rooms.

Ms Marcus, who now works for Sky News, told her colleague Peta Credlin that McCormack had made sexually suggestive comments about underage boys in the newsroom but they had been ignored.

"I was quite troubled when I worked there about how open and brazen he was in talking about his attraction to young boys," she said.

"The thing that saddens me and angers me is that there still seems to be some sort of protection. There are colleagues that during the court case, during the proceedings, that would be taking him out to bars...they had been quite public in their support."

She also alleges that the now former executive producer, Grant Williams, had suspicions about McCormack and attempted to "get rid of him" before his arrest.

Ms Marcus has also said that Mr Williams had been taken off the show and moved into another role at Nine Network after staff made complaints about him. She said that Mr Williams had been trying to pull some staff members into line after they showed support for McCormack.

Nine has since denied the allegations saying management had "no prior knowledge of the claims being made in relation to the charges against Ben McCormack."

They also claimed that Ms Marcus has an "axe to grind against Ben". This comes after Ms Marcus made a previous complaint about McCormack's workplace behaviour in an unrelated incident in 2014.